


Unsubstantial

by sequence_fairy



Series: Truth To Hide [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, post-686
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:21:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orihime thinks, sometimes, about what it's like being married to a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsubstantial

**Author's Note:**

> I’m leaning into my post-686 feels. This is… I’m not sure. It’s a little bit headcanon, a little bit fic, a lot me trying to deal with things in a constructive way and so. Here we are.

He is a shadow. 

Oh, he smiles, and calls her ‘Orihime’ and pecks her on the cheek in the morning when she leaves for work, but he is a shadow - a living spectre of the man she loved when she was fifteen. And as the years pass, he gets more and more hollow, as if he is slipping further and further from this mortal coil, and has entirely stopped trying to hang on.

She notices. Of course she does. What kind of wife would she be if she didn’t? 

She’s not an idiot, she knows there’s a reason why rainy days make him withdraw to hide on the roof, why on snowy evenings he disappears on long walks, alone. She knows why he went still and cold the night they realised Kazui had inherited his father’s _shinigami_  powers.  

She knows why he doesn’t sleep next to her - hasn’t for years - and she knows why he’s never quite managed to move on - why they still live in his father’s house, why he’s never been able to find his outlet - and she watches him struggle, watches him fight himself. She watches him work not to flinch when he - on the rare occasion that he does - reaches out to touch her.  

She watches him, and carefully makes room for the other woman in their marriage, because Orihime knows that no matter what vows he made, and what words he said, Ichigo hasn’t belonged to her since the night Rukia Kuchiki ran him through with her _zanpakuto_  and changed his entire world. 

He did marry her though - because they had thought that’s what you should do, when you’re 21 and pregnant because you fell into bed with your best friend after a night blurred by tears and drink - but Orihime remembers their wedding day, remembers the way his eyes had gone distant and the way his voice had echoed hollow as he’d recited the vows. 

Orihime knows exactly what was waiting for Ichigo, and sometimes, she wishes she could go back in time and she wishes that the power of rejection that burns, unused in her veins, could reject _this_ , could make it so _this_ never happened, could make it so their reckless choices had no consequences other than small pangs of regret. 

The worst thing, is that Orihime knows she would forgive him if he ever strayed, she would forgive him his trespasses because she _knows_  this was not how he planned to end up - but he’s painfully faithful. She almost wishes there was actually someone else - someone who was not a petite death goddess - someone _alive,_ someone she could think of bitterly when Ichigo doesn’t come to bed, when he doesn’t look her in the eye, when he doesn’t have anything to say to her for weeks on end. 

Sometimes, she thinks, as she signs her name next to the credit card charge for Kazui’s private tutoring - still ‘Inoue Orihime’ - that it’s probably a good thing she never got around to changing it. After all, what’s the point when you’re married to a ghost?


End file.
